Sunday, 22 February 2015

You know when it gets into this twilight zone period on Sunday afternoon evening when it suddenly dawns on you that you are back at work the next day and it fills you with dread? My girlfriend calls it the Antique Roadshow blues, because as a kid she would see that come on the TV and it was an instant reminder that the weekend was on the wane. I'm having that right now. Need to liven up the last few hours of freedom...

Diet Cig is a duo intent on dishing out indie bounce and young adult ephemera a la Speedy Ortiz. Their new EP Over Easy is a playful expulsion of overt emotions, whether it be the freedom of being in your first apartment ('Breathless'), the painful expositions of hipsters ('Scene Sick') or the anger at Ivy Leaguer arseholes ('Harvard'). It's all innocuous, bubbly, and as Alex Luciano puts it, it just makes you want to dance.

I spoke recently about San Francisco band Happy Diving. One member of that band, Samuelito Cruz, is also in Never Young, a four-piece that slam into Les Savy Fav territory in their new self-titled EP, imbued as it is with mood, menace and a heady degree of melody. 'Ur A Front' in particular holds up to the LSF comparison, while the rest of the EP keeps the noise evenly calibrated with icy precision. These guys are definitely ones to watch. Race out and grab this 12" now.

This one is super old - 9 months is kinda old, right? - I Im Eye My's 7 Transmissions though is pretty great. Out through Not Not Fun, the Philadelphia duo's release is a blast synth oddysey (emphasis on odd) - feeling both a narcotic drag through perpetual Blade Runner nights, and a narcoleptic heart murmur synthesised psychomania. It's an overblown, overpopulated overriding of the senses. There is such a heady mix of genres, styles, modes and moods that outside of 'Momentum' maintains the heat and cybernetic intensity - when they final track is titled 'She's On A Different Trip', I couldn't agree more.

Toronto outfit Prom have a pot pourri of influence swirling about in their veins, having taken the National way of constructing propulsive emotive rock and combined it with shoegaze histrionics, heightened post-rock expulsions and elegiac malaise on their Dumb Summer EP. They rightfully describe their music as "bummer jams", so you know this isn't going to be a buoyant bucolic ride into the sun, despite the above band photo. My favourite track on here is 'Park Moods', even though that avoids Daniel Wilson's baleful baritone.

Heading to Australia now - Sydney in fact - and Claire & The Cops. The trio have just brought out Lounge Lovers on cassette, and the EP is a blase exercise in garage surf-scuzz. They manage to marry the laconic spazz of Dune Rats, the glam immediacy of King Tuff and the balls-to-the-wall noise of Straight Arrows. It's not just fun, but there is meat in the sound that really hooks. This is gooooood.

Back in Toronto to finish up with Terrorista. The duo have been putting out a series of colourful tapes since September, and Green Tape is the third in the collection. The band churn out doleful loud rock fare that has slowly refined over the course of these three tapes, right up to second song 'Sean Drums' that holds precariously onto a cracked melody that supersedes the scabrous sonics and ventures into emotive rock territory. To hear the evolution I have put all three releases below for your perusal.

When I mentioned French band Cowbones late last year, I mentioned that I was very excited about their upcoming album, Vox Populi Polux. This anticipation was based on the above photograph and one track only, 'New Cobonnies'. I compared them to Grinderman, Jon Spencer and other rampant psychobilly misanthropes - and that comparison still stands. But Cowbones are a much stranger beast than this acknowledgement. Opening with the staccato drum machine and organ combo with warped vocals of 'No Law', we realise that these punks are unique in their derangement. 'Cramp' seems devoted to The Cramps/The Mummies et al, thus the name, but then there is the sparse, distorted dance-punch of 'Honey' or the syncopated belch of 'My Room'. 'Pink' whips out the Theremin and takes us down into the sordid Underworld. Most of the lyrics whether Gallic or English are delivered from a megaphone made out of rusted aluminium and razor wire. It's a special brand of hell that I for one subscribe to wholeheartedly.

Saturday, 21 February 2015

Back in 2011-2012 I mentioned an artist from Sydney who went under the name Colours. That guy, Tom Crandles, pointed me in the direction of a lot of Sydney bands (such as Day Ravies, Unity Floors and Bachelor Pad) that I have since become massive fans of. Tom hasn't been sitting idly though - along with Tim Jenkins (Parades), he has transformed into the discombobulated pop of Au.Ra. Launching their debut LP Jane's Lament through felte Records, Au.Ra construct woozy soundscapes that envelop and entrance - the psych laced drift of 'Morning'; the jangle and drift of 'Sun'; the somnambulist float of 'You're On My Mind'. There are echoes of other lo-fi dreamers such as Beach Fossils in some of these tracks, with a lick of electronic sheen sliding in and out of the ether. The cover art is fairly indicative of what the album conveys - a seductive, flowing darkness, delivered with a slickness and vibrancy often found wanting elsewhere. Great stuff.

Another day, another Los Angeles Police Department release it seems. 'Water & Wine' is the flipside to Ryan Pollie's incoming Insecurity 7", and it is a quieter but no less contemplative rumination of the Self, something Pollie is incredibly adept at producing. It drifts on the gentlest of breezes, a soft touch, and its simplistic beauty is alluring. Pre-order the 7" (out next week through Fat Possum) here.

Friday, 20 February 2015

Just a quick post to finish the week. I have been putting together a lineup for the first Sonic Masala show here in London, so I have been listening to a lot of new stuff for that express purpose - and I happened to stumble across this pretty great, slightly bonkers cover of Gang of Four's seminal rant 'Anthrax' by sludge lords Cattle. This led me to checking out their EP which is pretty amazing too - Leeds truly is one of the best grimy noise dens in the country. Hoping to hear a hell of a lot more out of these clowns this year...

Brisbane-based label Ruined Smile is pushing some interesting releases. I spoke about Moral Straitjacket last week; I will be talking about Hutt River Province and Feature next week. But to be honest, the release I have enjoyed the most thus far is this reissue of Nottingham's The Blue Period's And Suddenly The Days Draw Long Like Light-Years EP. With such an unwieldy and verbose title, I was thinking this would provided skeletal post-rock trappings - instead this is a intricate sojourn through the tetchy, fidgety indie fare that The Promise Ring, The Album Leaf or Jets To Brazil revelled in back in their day. So emo when it reference emotions, not a sub culture, then. The interplay between Celia McDougall and Chris Moore is understated yet impressive - their harmonies plaintive, sometimes schoolyard-shouty, sometimes bedroom-whispered. These guys know when to let a simple spidery lead echo out without altering direction, letting the lyrics colour the edges, and when to break out of contemplation and into playful interaction. It's 2015, so I am sure there will be those of you that will shelve this before you have listened to a lick of it - but And Suddenly The Days... proves that any genre can break out of the wintry embrace of its time capsule when the essence is distilled as creatively and fervently as this.

Thursday, 19 February 2015

Swedish punks RA are preparing to launch their blistering debut album Scandinavia on us (through Adrian Recordings in March) which can't come soon enough. The Malmo four-piece tear into a propulsive black hole of white noise, drums of the colossi, relentless basslines, and the commanding bellow and roar of Simon Mino, resting somewhere between Ian Curtis, Disappears' Brian Case and fellow Scandinavian reprobate Elias Bender Ronnefelt. But unlike the nascent disdain that coloured Iceage's first releases and the measured temperament of their 2015 guise, RA expel a fervent energy that comes from enervation, desperation and finely-calibrated dissent, coalescing forth in a miasma of spat mantras designed to enrapture and hypnotise rather than eviscerate. While the singles 'These Days' and 'The Void' have more nihilistic pulse propelling them out of the darkness, songs like 'The South' has a pop buoyancy swirling under the opaque surface, and the title track feeds into Gothic march synth-punk futurism. All in all, a heady and heavy album that nonetheless crackles with energy.

I'm trying to mark 120 assignments on my holiday, so here is a six-pack of A/V viscera to take my mind off it - come, sit down, take a load off, enjoy.

METZ is back! The Toronto noiseniks have a new record on the way, imaginatively titled ii, and are cooking up a special treat in the form of 'Acetate'. A pancake artiste puts his special spin on things, throwing dice, marijuana, pine cones and a glowing anal egg to create a incredibly tasty dish, with added product placement (I definitely want that MAD ripoff tee).

Still heavy but in a mellowed ambient sense, we have 'New Topia', another cut from Texan titans This Will Destroy You's Another Language album of last year. The psychedelic animations combine well, bleeding into each other to make this a mind melter of infinite value.

Melbourne's premiere underground crooner Johnny Telafone has smashed it out of the park with his dour 'Inferno', a lurking lounge number that wouldn't be too out of place with Dean Stockwell lip-syncing this into a lightbulb. As it stands, you have washed out apocalyptic fare swimming across a sheet while Liam "Snowy Nasdaq" Halliwell (The Ocean Party) cracks out a stellar guitar solo on an unplugged guitar. I know a lot of people don't get Telafone, but for everyone's sake, try. This is the real deal.

Speaking of The Ocean Party, they also have a new video out - 'Floodlights', one of the best tracks on their brilliant fourth album Soft Focus. Seeing Snowy wandering around the countryside is bemusing enough - seeing the others take Venetian splits as they wander the Melbourne streets heightens the laconic meander.

Up to Sydney and down by the river with Food Court. It's typical rollicking fare from the four-piece, the kind of marching forth frivolity that comes from getting daggy down on the water, faffing about on boats you have no idea about, with nothing to do and no place to be. It's a perfect ramshackle jam into the sun.

But we can't always have sunshine and lollipops - and that's where The Body & Thou comes in. Their grainy B&W video for 'Beyond the Realms of Dream, That Fleeting Shade Under the Corpus of Vanity' plays out like a VHS serial killer video diary. Combine this with the bands' typically annihilating industrial noise, and you have a feverish nightmare that just won't quit.

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Jack Name (touring guitarist for White Fence) has brought out a new album, Weird Moons, and it is pretty weird. It has a plethora of touchstones, both past and present. I can see why Castle Face Records were drawn to the record, especially seeing as they also recently put out King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's latest LP. The woozy opener 'Werewolf Factory' could have come out of that band's think tank, with references to Ariel Pink, Thee Oh Sees and Warren Zevon mashed into the cracked centre. Its a seriously warped melange of sounds - the warble of 'Lowly Ants' reminds me of Air if they had lowered themselves into a Pink mire; the opening of 'Running After Ganymede' sounds like a stomach wind; the spectral swagger and stagger throughout 'Waiting For Another Moon' holds in thrall. In fact this entirely bizarre album holds one in thrall throughout, whether there is a glam rock blast-out, like King Tuff strung out on Numan's supply on 'Watcher Talk', the sun-warped sci-fi yacht rock of 'Io' or the maudlin introspection of maximal minimalist 'Lowly Ants'. This is an album that is made out of time and out of mind, and deserves to be huge. It won't be - but it deserves to be.

One of my favourite bands of the last few years has been Austin angular misanthropes Spray Paint. Their self-titled record on SS Records was an unheralded sucker punch of a record; and at the tail end of last year they followed it up with a great 7" on London's Upset The Rhythm label in Cussin and a new album in Clean Blood, Regular Acid. I have spoken about this excellent record already, but feel the need to mention it again as it is being released in Australia this month (through the excellent Homeless Records via Monofonus Press) and it inexplicably slipped through my fingers first time around.

Suffice to say that Spray Paint's third album is a tour de force of rusted and warped guitar, slow yet incessant drums, a fetid heartbeat bass and barbed, deadpan lyrics chanted with narcotic-numbed nonchalance (Homeless' head honcho Richie claimed it as his album of the year in 2014). Kicking off with the discordant twangs of seemingly incompetent musicians, the uneasy metronome that develops into a mordant urgency on opener 'Wet Beer' is maintained for the entirety of the album. 'Texas Talking Powder' comes across like Supersuckers boiled to their basest elements and lit with bare wires; 'Threesomes Can Wait' takes some of the anodyne precision of Disappears, flays it open with the brutality of a drunken butcher while The Cramps and B-52s beat each other to death with their own shoes on the crackling, blood spattered wireless radio.

There is a rich seam of American rock music at the moment that maniacally latches onto the literate outliers, intent to amuse and unseat, to entice and endanger. Parquet Courts are the light; Pile lurk in the dappled shadows; and Spray Paint twitch and mewl in the darkness, seemingly lost of faculties, ranting pitch black platitudes, all the while luring you closer and closer until you wake up, a jittering soothsayer, covered in filth, viscera and arcane words spiked in Nikko. Buy Clean Blood, Regular Acidhere - you'll thank me later.

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Normally I do covers on a Friday, if I do them at all. But on Friday something awful happened - an idol of mine, Slint guitarist David Pajo, attempted suicide. He survived. He called out for help via a heart-wrenching note on his social media feeds. Nevertheless it makes you realise how close people can be yet how far away they can seem to you, and vice versa, unless you remain emotionally close to them at all times. I don't often put super faithful covers up here, but Ex-Breathers did 'Good Morning, Captain' the other night, and its pretty much unfuckwithable, so it stands. I'm thinking of you Pajo, and all those who feel alone - you are never alone.

Saturday, 14 February 2015

I haven't had to celebrate Valentine's Day for over five years, which is great. My girlfriend's birthday is February 14, so I celebrate that. The thing is, it's so difficult doing anything nice for her because everyone else is getting shitting corporate bullshit gifts; and every restaurant is boosting the cost of dinner to be part of a set menu that mostly have cloying fringe crap like hearts and glitter and other chokable pap. Which means we usually stay home and watch movies and eat chocolate on that day, and head out before or after - which still works out for me at any rate, but it still sucks. So here are six tenuous links to this most hated of corporate days (seriously, love your other every day and make it special, and stop rubbing your faux happiness into singles' face on February 14).

1) For when things become too much or too weird, you need the twisted garage punk rock of Icky Boyfriends. The veteran SF trio have just put out one of the Live in San Francisco records that Castle Face Records love pumping out, and it's a veritable shit tonne of gangrenous fun. This is the kind of gig that if you took your better half to as a date, and she came away loving it, then you have a keeper. Equal parts rock, roll and stagger, all parts sloppy fun. They play the hits and then some - including this.

2) For when things happen off the cuff, you can dive headlong into the fuzzy lilting doo-wop pop of Impulsive Hearts. The Chicagoans try their hardest to keep things light and spontaneous - their music evokes "swimming after dark, beaches and dance parties" which can sound naff but on a day where manufactured love can go wrong, a bit of sepia tinged rock whimsy can't be a bad thing, can it?

3) For when the choice between a cuddly puppy and a bubble-bath of chocolate is too tight to call, call Pets Or Food. These Swedes call themselves "no romantics" - their new album is called No Romantik in case you thought they were joking - which fits perfectly here, and their sax skronk no wave blitzkrieg scours the Valentine scourge from even the lightest touch of love suckers. It's an atonal blast, and while they stand out like a sore thumb on this particular hit list, Pets Or Food are a great band much deserving of your time.

4) For when the one by your side is still sexy even after they fart incessantly...yep, we're talking about Best Friends there. It's taken a little while, but the four Sheffield lads are about ready to bring out their debut, suitably titled LP, Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane., through FatCat Records. Here is their taster, 'Fake Spit', and it's as raucous and silly as you'd expect - great, then.

5) For when the post coital rest is awkward thanks to a climax that shook the walls but also sounded like slightly "human sacrifice"...we have Detroit's Ritual Howls. Their second album Turkish Leather came out on felt Records last year and I missed it, but thankfully am picking up the slack due to this video for 'Zemmoa'. There is a pagan intensity to the echo on the vocals, and the incessant drum beat and apocryphal guitar lines add a feverish layer to proceedings, ebbing and flowing like the release of blood.

6) Finally, for when there is no one to be your Valentine - you may as well do it for yourself. Free Yourself is the new record from Flesh Lights - perfectly named, I'm sure you will agree. These Texan punks are all about injecting punch into their pop - there is nothing fake about this, it's just unadulterated fun for all concerned. And if you have thrown this on in the darkness of your room, all alone - why shouldn't you be able to indulge in a little fun me time? You're just about due...

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

The reissue revolution continues, and within you find things you didn't even know you missed. case in point - 80s art punk denizens of Woollongong, The Sunday Painters, whose three EPs have been brought together into one LP called In My Dreams by What's Your Rupture?. The trio's love of VU and Television are pretty obvious, but what is even more endearing about these tracks is the drum machine, the rudimentary technology being reamed to their absolute limits, the kneejerk jump from one style to another so as to feel like you are listening to a mixtape from song to song (augmented by the blasted-apart cover of Bowie's 'Rebel Rebel'). Its such a bizarre and beguiling time capsule that, while Im glad I didn't grow up in Woollongong in the 70s/80s, I wish I could go back for just a taste of the demented pop these three slung out to the wanton few.

Monday, 9 February 2015

Ongakubaka has been a blog about psych noise rock that I have followed and enjoyed for some time now, and like Sonic Masala (and other blogs before us), they have gone out and started their own label. The first release to come from their stable is Hissy Fit, the new EP for Portland loose psych dwellers Wett Nurse. The organ imbues the Thee Oh Sees heavy work with an authenticity and baroqueness that is endearing and eclectic - it lends songs like 'Spook It' a otherworldly kitsch that aligns it with 50s B-movie madness. And I love 50s B-movie madness.

Bizarrely I haven't warmed as much to Ongakubaka's second release, the self-titled cassette from paisley-psyched German duo Lovebyrd - but it has been getting some great reviews, so definitely check it out here.

Leighton Craig (Primitive Motion, The Deadnotes, Kindling House) told me about Ragtime Frank just before I left Australia in 2014. He also sent me his album, I'm A Rocketship For My Lord, a few months ago - but it's only been the past week, when I was laid up with the good ol chest infection, that I finally slipped myself into these corroded blues, and I have no idea why I waited so long. With Craig helping out on drums and some vocals, the album focuses primarily on the unhinged fuzz brew that percolates unsteadily from Frank's guitar, and the gravelly sermons that spit from his lips. With his "cats" and "dig" calls, you still aren't mistaking these serrated lo-fi devolutions as jazz locutions - or even gospel proclamations - even though the vehement delivery is that of a rabid, blues-drenched evangelist. It's a cacophonous maelstrom, always threatening to fall apart but resolutely, belligerently staying off-kilter yet forever upright, and Frank's battered preacher's yowl and guitar-as-crucifix-and-Bible is slammed maniacally into your soul. Incredible.

Sunday, 8 February 2015

Let's whisper in the white noise of the weekend twilight with some outlier music from two European explorers...

Jacob Faurholt continues to mine sepulchral waters as Crystal Shipsss, with latest track 'Metal' (the precursor of a mysterious new album due later in the year) being no exception. A low hush emanates for 20 seconds before a deep bassline seems to herald the end of times...but an industrial apocalypse is eradicated with the drum machine and the high-pitched, aloof vocals that take us into Bauhaus' lair, even if we remain wallflowers at this Gothic ball, unable to fathom the machinations of what is at play. Crystal Shipsss have caught the support of Nadja in their hometown of Copenhagen in March - nice one guys!

Back in 2012 I wrote about a UK artist called Silver - you can read and listen here. The artist, Molly Macleod, has changed her name to TOOMS (I'm desperately hoping in reference to one of the best TV villains/monsters, The X-Files' Eugene Tooms?), and she is back into the looped pedal blues with new EP Misophonia. The industrial crawl that permeates these tracks produces a palpable dread, a creeping knowledge that the spectral guitar drone and haunting, layered vocals/moans is drawing us inexplicably to a definite truth of being that our minds are incapable of comprehending. The sawing opener 'Aeolian' in particular is cathartic and haunting in the darker sense; the closer 'Flesh & Veins' a folk lament from the bowels of the earth. It's a richly seductive siren call into the moors of lament and regret, a supernatural sworl, a churning elixir of dawning, ecstatic horror. Brilliant.

I'm still flying high people. This week has been a pretty big one - first we saw the ousting of utter stain Campbell Newman from my (for better or worse) beloved state of Queensland in Australia. I had a birthday. The next two releases for Sonic Masala Records' test pressings came through. The next couple of SMR releases are falling into place (with some massive updates to come very soon). The SM Fest and its sideshows are pretty much locked down (so pumped for the inclusion of Dead Farmers!). Saw the brilliant Disappears. And listened to a bunch of great new records, including Hey Colossus!, Chook Race and Lightning Bolt (!). I finished up with some birthday drinks last night. And although I am still fairly riddled with flu, the world has shown itself to be an OK place after all. Here are seven more reasons to get excited about the world we live in.

First up, I have to apologise for not writing about Californian band Moral Straitjacket's self titled album earlier - the cassettes (put out through great little Brisbane label Ruined Smile, of all people) is sold out. Don't worry - I missed out too. There were only 23 copies of the damned thing! That said, it deserves to be heard - a punk rant of destitution and desolation. The A-side is more 'straight up', in that the songs are familiar tropes of tortured rock of the working class - a lo-fi undertone of The Nation Blue perhaps? The B side plays with form though - with spoken word, ambient space and crackling tape, albeit with the same gut punch.

Calypso is a trio from Asheville that like to stretch out sanity to breaking point. Oracle is a psych mutation - a mutant of an EP that surreptitiously eats up its influences (The Raincoats, 13th Floor Elevators, Ariel Pink, et al) and spitting it all out in a glistening, quivering chimera of its own personality and awe. Oracle is a truly beguiling trip well worth everyone's time - you can grab it here.

Foot Hair is a five-headed toxic punk attack from Northern England, haunting the moors and terrorising the locals with the nascent noise and slack jaws. Their self-titled album is intent on swirling around the drain of despair and self-hatred, but without the self-harm - in fact these guys revel in their self-imposed darkness, a seedier Pissed Jeans. 'Cool Runnings' is the standout song as far as levity is concerned - with titles such as 'King of Scum' and 'Send Us Your Blood', you know we are scraping the bottom of the rust-caked barrel here. Out through Box Records, who have also released the likes of Gnod, Richard Dawson and Blown Out, so the brutality is in good hands.

New York's Surrender The Spirit remind me a bit of early Architecture In Helsinki, a bit of Mates Of State, and a lot of early Dan Deacon. The duo have stepped back from the rock oriented backwaters that they are more familiar with, and their fully-fledged launch into the glitchy kaleidoscopic waters of this saccharine pop mantra is confident and freeing.

Now to laugh in terrified hysteria as Haust take the Pop 1280 launch into the dank depths of punk despair, and open the gates of both MC5 and the sickest of Gorgons. The Norwegian four-piece are as heavy and ridiculous as you might expect - taking some of the basest (and therefore brilliant) punk rock noise and lathering it with the guttural screams of a black metal banshee of darkest nightmares. Yet it is all done with a modicum of humour and self-referential nuance.

An active member of Canberra bands Spartak (who played our inaugural Sonic Masala Fest last year) and Agency (who you will hear a lot more from in the very near future...), Shoeb Ahmad has a solo track that is floating around the ridges at the moment courtesy of London label Mystery Plays' singles club. 'Horses (A Coda' is a lilting, haunting track that feels like it's blown in somewhere in that ethereal hour between the end of the night and the beginning of the dawn, where everything is less than black yet not truly light, the frost crunching underfoot, the shadows nebulous and breathing. It's a subtle beauty - more please.

Let's finish these proceedings with Chimes, a bunch of NY psychic slackers that bring the noise on current record (and appropriately named) Psychic Slack. It's deliciously frenetic far - 'Total Sunflower' is a Wooden Shjips jam, condensed into a compact capsule and infused with a motorik growl and a liberal dose of Tabasco. 'Rinso' is a flange-flayed floater in the river, heavy on the numbness, light on the light. Deep and dark, Chimes are pretty fucking great.

Saturday, 7 February 2015

I just had to mention this. Seminal grunge-pit boozehounds feedtime have only recently been given their due thanks to the brilliant box set vinyl of their albums put together by Sub Pop, The Aberrant Years (one of my proudest possessions). Well unless you have been living under a rock the past few days you would know that the band are releasing new material! 'Flatiron' is the first new track from the Sydney malcontents in decades - plural - and it's feedtime all over - an urgent, stuttering, rumbling bassline, opened with a scuzzy, rusted out slide, Rick Johnson's barked vocals. Even with the helping hand of one Mikey Young, it sounds just like feedtime of the 1980s. 'Flatiron' is the precursor to a 7" coming out on the Seattle label on Tuesday - get the pre-order here if you still can (GOT MINE). If based in Australia, though, maybe save the money you'd blow on shipping and head down to your local record store - they should stock it.

Friday, 6 February 2015

Well, despite what people thought (well, I thought), we have made it to the end of another week, relatively unscathed. So let's celebrate with a cover EP that puts a maudlin yet mischievous spin on a bunch of "classics". Coming from a band that calls themselves "nightmare pop", it probably isn't much of a surprise that New Orleans duo Bent Denim have launched Derivative Works, six tracks of stripped back, "earnest" takes on the likes of Blink-182 ('Dammit'), Taylor Swift ('Shake It Off') and somewhat incongruously, contemporaries Elvis Depressedly ('Weird Honey'). I really enjoyed this - the shifts in tone really contort the context of these songs. It may not be the type of EP Ill continue with for long - 'Dammit' starts to play like a Death Cab-lite novelty after the warmth starts to disappear - but their muted-unmuted swing on Angel Olsen's 'Unfucktheworld' and a reimagined Galaxie 500 with 'Tugboat' reminded me just how good those songs were, and have me scrabbling for the original. And 'Shake It Off'? Possibly the best restructured song on here. It's all a bit of a lark, flexing of the muscles and funnybone, and for that alone it deserves pause, and anticipation for when the boys throw their arm at their next, original, release.

I really wanted to head along to the Lexington tomorrow night to catch the launch of sonic madmen Hey Colossus' new album, In Black And Gold. I am heading along to the Disappears show at The Lexington tonight instead (sorry guys - double booked!) which will (hopefully) be a killer show in itself - but if this album is anything to go by, that show will go all Scanners on people, painting the venue red with exploded heads. It isn't as all-out batshit crazy as their brilliant album of 2013 Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo, but there is a tempered aggression held here that underscores a more deliberated and calibrated cerebral attack. It starts off with 'Hold On' which is all contemplative, a mystical drift more akin to the Jason Pierce end of psychedelia - but don't worry, the darkness returns with the cantankerous yet plodding march of 'Sisters and Brothers', a syncopated stutter imbued with thunder that Pere Ubu have mined of late. 'Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!' strikes a balance between blues-addled excess and Monster Magnet-fried excess - the two excesses finely complementing each other - and all just over three minutes in fermentation. 'Wired_Brainless' is as meticulous in its lurking in the shadows creep as it is ludicrous; 'Black And Gold' takes a closer take to doom before dragging it out into the desert and burying it up to its neck; 'Lagos Atom' is a synapse surge of bio-engineered horror; 'Eat It' is Black Sabbath for the 21st century unhinged maniac. Closer 'Sinking, Feeling' owes as much to the Spaghetti Western gunslingers as it does to the molten earth axe-slingers. It is all a much more studied and serious release - but then again, this is Hey Colossus we are talking about here. Short, tethered, acutely focused - but you can't escape the gurning insanity that lies therein.

Thursday, 5 February 2015

A bit late to the party on the anarchic mess that is Don't Believe In Time, the mind melt 12" from Italians For Food. (it came out mid last year). It's got that squat-house dynamic that mirrors as disparate locales as Amsterdam in the 80s, France in the 00s (think especially of Looks Like Miaou), or even the VU collectivism of the 60s/70s. Even New Zealand has its own kinship in the form of Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing. It's like when civilisations around the globe develop something technological totally independent of each other - or how Volcano and Dante's Peak came out the same time. For Food. continue to strip all genres of their base tropes, going beyond atonal punk to deconstruct and resuscitate tribal drones, pop immolation, industrial noise, naive art, spoken drivel, cathartic experimentation and found instrument demolition. Grab this impressive record here.

I was prepping this post about LA popped shoegazers Draag when I saw that Australian site The AU Review was premiering the entire new EP, Traci Lordz, in full! Caught out there. Ah well - it's a good release. A quick (and incredibly strong) short-form follow-up to their debut and much lauded album last year, Traci Lordz starts out with a lazy, blazed meander in 'Milk Money' before the wall of sound and sonorous vocals comes into full attack on 'Lavender Hole'. It follows on from there - there's a beefier MBV spiral on 'Janet', a grunged up dirge for 'Gown', a percolating synth-driven pop drop with 'Chair'. The decidedly heavy opening of 'Monolith' hints at both a restless growl and restless spirit that could either be a cathartic exhortation (it does go for over eight minutes after all) or a serrated sign of things to come. Closer 'Hell' is a warped synth downward squall into the netherlands of disco fugue, a bizarre number that feels more Peaking Lights-via-100% Silk in delivery. It's a lethally expansive cocktail - I think Traci Lords would abide.

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

So it's my birthday today. I wasn't really sure what to write about - there are heaps of good bands that I wanted to have as my 'birthday post' - but then I haven't been listening to that stuff. Today is a hellish day at work, so I needed something that could help me hit the slipstream of cruise control, take me on some cerebral flights of fantasy, and just get me the fuck to 5pm so I can get home to my girlfriend, a bucketload of spicy buffalo wings, some beers and party times. And the two albums that are allowing me to stay chilled in the midst of a adolescent shitstorm of a day?

Cloudsound and Geoff.

Have you heard of either of these dudes? Geoff is the musical pseudonym of one of the founders of eclectic musical outlier label Teflon Beast (responsible for last year's great Point of Being release). His latest effort is a 30+ retrospective (the dude may be under the radar, but that means he is prolific as fuck) called Searching For The Sound: 2011-2014, which delves into everything from contemplative, Western-esque drone that Dylan Carlson has loved of late ('Earth Surf'), found sound in the idiot box of the sports world ('Fanfare/Victory') and a guitar odyssey of noise ('Guitar #1-3'). There are improvisations and electronic extrapolations as well - this is an expansive journey of the mind and soul. In other words, Geoff is great.

And then we have the 18th release to come out of Heligator Records, and this one is a longplayer as opposed to the normal single or short form fare the charity based label is known for. Cloudsound is the languid guitar-and-gauze explorations of American-in-Sweden Lee Boyd and II is a meditative journey into hidden inner realms. It's the type of contemplative tapestry that could fit snugly into a New Age therapy session as it could a blissed-out expedition into the unknown, and it's this nebulous grandeur that, rather than detract from its intent, augments it. II will take you wherever you want it to, incrementally, in ephemeral moments that melt into each other just like the cover art's sun melts over the horizon...

Another Feb the 4th, another birthday. Yay. It's dark outside, I'm on my way to work while the rest of the world sleeps (well there are heaps awake but let's keep this dramatic, OK?) I need something to get me over the line. Let's Pile it on then.

The Boston quartet have released another cut from their upcoming album You're Better Than This (out through Exploding In Sound/Fierce Panda Records), and 'Mr Fish' is effortlessly fitful, drawn-out, restless, spaced out, sparse, and crowded. You can't be called Pile if you can't pile it all in to one song. Rick Maguire's agitated-soporific drawl echoes across the bar as he rips out a story of broken thoughts, dreams, glasses - shit I don't know. The sinuous musicianship ripples within itself, turning itself inside out as it chugs and churns, a kaleidoscope of teeth-grinding dexterity that comes from manic expression. Dripping was - is - one of my favourite albums of the past few years, and I cannot fucking wait till this record comes out. If these guys aren't big by the end of this year, it'll be a bloody shame - this is what Modest Mouse used to be to me, and as far as I can say, that is the highest praise I can give this.

Tuesday, 3 February 2015

Colleen Green keeps the hits coming in preparation for new album I Want To Grow Up (out in a few weeks on Hardly Art). 'TV' is a perfect follow-on from the blase buzz of 'Pay Attention' in an ode to the constant bastion of companionship that is the humble television. As I have said before, there has always been a slight too much of the "I don't care" attitude to Green that has had me on the precipice of loving her music, but not grabbing me wholesale. And while she isn't changing her shtick much at all, there is a simplicity to the melodies and a more amiable connection here that actually has me anticipating this record. Plus, I love my TV.

The early bird release for tickets to our 2nd Sonic Masala Fest on Saturday March 14 are now at a close - tickets now stand at $20. Feeling gyped? Well, just remember, with 22 bands on display (less than a buck a band), plus cheap Coopers Pale Ale, plus free barefoot bowls, plus a 4ZZZ stall, plus band, label and festival merchandise and releases - it's still an OK deal. I'm sure the food will be alright too. But just to sweeten the deal that little bit more, here are three more bands that are on the lineup...

Sydney's Dead Farmers have been been blasting unadulterated rock for almost a decade now - can you believe that? They don't get up to the Sunshine State all that often, so it's a bit of a coup that we have the trio involved in Sonic Masala Fest. Furthermore, they will have in tow new album Wasteland (out on RIP Society) which, if first taste 'Can't Go' is anything to go by, is likely to melt faces. They are interested in the purest form of rock, what RIP Society head Nic Warnock prefers to reference as "pre-punk rock" - and namecheck the likes of Neil Young, The Faces, The Stones, Creedence, The Saints - all via a Minutemen-esque work ethic. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

One of the purest, brightest, and most destructive sparks to light up Brisbane in the past twelve months has been Clever. Featuring members past and present of Per Purpose, The Wrong Man, Psy Ants and more, this four-piece are taking the Venom P Stinger route into Brisbane sweatbox oblivion, a white-hot, multi-limbed, irascible demon intent on exploding and regenerating in two-minute spurts.

Brisbane's purveyors of dumb sludge Bottlecock have had a decent few months ey. What with the launch of their record - Record - and their 'Girt By Dickheads' coming in 7th on the 4ZZZ Hot 100 for 2014, the trio are riding high (as high as these slack bastards can ride I guess). They are a good bunch of crude losers - make sure you use your bottles as cocks in their honour.

Monday, 2 February 2015

Naomi Punk is the other band getting me through this miserable night (that and some baked chicken, tomato, olives, lemon, garlic and thyme on rice - because I like to cook and the kitchen is super warm - and gallons of Lemsip). They brought out 2nd album Television Man through Captured Tracks last year, and it is the type of dirty garage punk with a glossed, glazed edge that I absolutely love. There is a grunge growl here that reminds me of a band like True Widow - albeit with the more angular brood that those Copenhagen kids brandish with such wanton disdain. If you missed this record last year - and I have to admit that aside from hearing 'Firehose Face' over a venue PA in December, I did - then you need to hunt this down. It's bloody great.

About

It was early on a Sunday morning at ATP - A Nightmare Before Christmas 2009. After downing a fair few, at 4am we decided to cook a curry. It was during the consumption of this drunkenly delicious breakfast treat that we decided to actually do something about the music we talk about all the time.

So we started a blog – and Sonic Masala was born. Now into its fourth year, the blog has spread out to call both Australia and the UK its home (and the rest of the world), and has expanded to include gigs, festivals and a record label under its black umbrella. Come on, eat the noize.

If an mp3 is up here, it's because we have been talking about it, and think the whole world needs to know more. It's there to give you a little taste. Then, if you like, check out the band live and spend all your hard earned cash on their records. If we've posted up an mp3 of your stuff and you're not too keen on the idea, let us know and we'll happily take it down pronto.

Get in touch

If you want to get in touch with Sonic Masala please email us at sonic.masala@gmail.com.